Posts Tagged ‘Bing’

Popular microblogging service Twitter earlier this week announced that it had reached agreements with Microsoft and Google to integrate users’ tweets into search results, creating a dramatically changed environment for search engine optimization (SEO).

The battling search giants will both have access to Twitter’s vast store of public data in real time, enabling Google and Bing users to track trends with a high degree of accuracy. AFP reports that, under the terms of a recently signed deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will also gain access to the real-time data.

Microsoft has signed an additional deal that will give Bing and, presumably, Yahoo access to user status updates on Facebook. This will provide search engine optimization (SEO) professionals with an additional analysis tool to help them more carefully craft site content for improved search rankings.

Rumors about the Twitter deal had circulated for weeks, fed by sources inside that company who said that a deal was close. Experts say that effective search engine optimization (SEO) will have to become more responsive and more content-based in order to fully take advantage of the new opportunity.

Source:

• Brafton

Maybe the idea of using Bing for search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t such a big deal after all.

While many have touted the importance of a Microhoo deal which would give Bing and Yahoo a significant portion of the search engine market and make the combined entity more important in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), it seems that Bing has hit a snag.

According to figures released last week from StatCounter, Bing saw its market share in the U.S. and around the globe drop for the first time since it was unveiled earlier this year. In what may make matters worse for the Microsoft/Yahoo partnership, Yahoo also saw its U.S. market share drop more than a full percentage point in September.

Both Yahoo and Bing’s drop appears to be a direct gain for search behemoth Google. According to StatCounter, a combined Bing/Yahoo search presence had 20.14 percent of the U.S. search market in August, compared to 77.83 percent for Google. But in September, Yahoo and Bing saw their share drop to 17.91 percent while Google increased to 80.08 percent.

“The trend has been downwards for Bing since mid-August,” said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. “The wheels haven’t fallen off but the underlying trend must be a little worrying for Microsoft.”

However, it may be too early to count out Bing as last month Nielsen reported that the Microsoft product held 10 percent of the search engine market.

Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Bing posted higher search-engine growth on a weekly basis in June than its three main rivals, according to online Web site measurement researcher Hitwise, though Google Inc. (GOOG) continued to distance itself from its rivals.

The software giant’s search engine has gained market share on a weekly basis since it was launched last month, going from 3.4% in the first week of the month to 6.63% by month’s end, according to Hitwise. Microsoft, long an also-ran to Google, is hoping Bing becomes a bigger player in the lucrative online-advertising arena.

Still, Google accounted for 74% of all U.S. searches conducted for the four weeks ended June 27, up fractionally from May and the prior year’s 69%. Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) accounted for 16% last month, up a bit from May but down from 20% last June. Microsoft’s sites dipped a bit from both periods, to 5.3%, while IAC/Interactive Corp.’s (IACI) Ask.com slid to 3.2%.

Longer search queries have increased in popularity over the past year, said Hitwise. It noted average searches of five to more than eight words in length increasing 8% from a year ago. Searches of eight or more words increased 16%. At the same time, shorter search queries – those averaging one to four words long – fell 2%.

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• Wall Street Journal

Brand loyalty is a powerful thing, especially when it comes to technology. Consider the battle brewing now between Google and Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.  Even if Bing proves to be just as good as Google, it might not matter because of the strength of Google’s brand. An independent usability and consumer preference study, which we’ve obtained and embedded below, suggests as much. It was conducted by the Catalyst Group, a usability research and design firm located in New York City.

The study was an intense focus group in which 12 subjects were monitored with eye-tracking cameras as they conducted searches. Afterward, they were interviewed and completed a survey. Prior to the test, all the subjects used Google as their main search engine. Following the test, 4 out of the 12, or one third, said that overall they preferred Bing. The other 8 said that they preferred Google because they were already familiar with it, used other Google products, or that Bing’s improvements are simply not enough to make them switch.

What is amazing is that when the test subjects were asked to rate Bing on specific criteria (visual design, organization of features, filtering options, and relevance of results), Bing handily beat Google in everything but result relevance. Arguably, that is the most important criteria, but most of the study participants thought that both search engines tied on result relevance. So even though Bing ranked better on design, and tied on relevance, that was not enough for most of them to switch.

Catalyst CEO Nick Gould concludes that Microsoft “created something as good as Google and that is not good enough.” Overall, the test subjects “were not swayed.” No wonder Microsoft is spending up to $100 million on Bing marketing.

Remember, this is only a dozen people so it is not a statistically valid sample. Consider the survey results anecdotal. What is more conclusive are the eye-tracking results.

About half of the participants found and used the Explore Pane on the left side of Bing’s home page and results pages to aid in refinement and navigation, while all of them ignored the navigation/refinement links along the top left of Google (Web, video, Images, Maps, News).

Also because the Explore Pane on Bing takes up the left hand column and then stops, creating white space underneath, people naturally stop there. Heat maps generated by the eye-tracking data showed that people scroll much farther down Google’s search results pages, perhaps because there is no visual cue telling them to stop or they were not finding what they were looking for. It is not clear they got better results with Bing, but if the result they wanted was not above the fold, then they might use the Explore pane to refine their search.

The way results were displayed also had an effect on how long people looked at the ads along the top. The amount of time spent on the ads varied by search, depending on what kind of additional navigation information was presented just below the sponsored results. For instance, a search on Bing for “digital camera” concentrates attention there with navigational links to filter results by top brands, prices and guides. Participants spent 150 percent more time looking at the ads just above that activity zone than on Google.

A search for a local hotel, however, produces similar results on both search engines in that area just below the top ads (a map with local listings). So there was not much difference between the two in the how much time was spent looking at the top ads related to that search. In all cases, the ads on the right were only noticed about half the time.

Source:

• Tech Crunch

Citigroup conducted a study comparing 200 queries on Google, Yahoo and Bing. The study found that Google is much more relevant than Bing, in returning relevant results. Google returned the most relevant result 71 percent of the time, compared with Bing at 49 percent of the time and Yahoo 30 percent of the time.

The queries picked were pulled mostly from Google Zeitgeist, Microsoft’s xRank and Yahoo Buzz in the categories of Entertainment, Health, Local, News, Retail, Sports, Travel and Other. Then after running the 200 queries, Citigroup picked the winner based on two criteria:

1) Relevancy of the organic search results; and 2) Robustness of the search experience, which included factors such as image and video inclusion, Search Assist, and Site Breakout.

Here are some of the charts from the study:

Microsoft’s new Bing search engine has eked out a slight gain in market share, according to statistics released Wednesday, but it has a long way to go before it catches up with industry leader Google.

Microsoft had 8.23 percent market share in June ” the first month its Bing online search engine was available, according to StatCounter Global Stats, a Web site traffic analysis firm. That put Bing not far behind Yahoo’s 11.04 percent market share but far behind Google’s 78.48 percent.

Microsoft, which is trying to grow its online services business against Google, had a 7.21 percent share of the search market in April with its MSN Search and Live Search properties, according to StatCounter. Google’s market share in April was 79.07 percent ” meaning its share dropped slightly between April and June.

“At first sight, a 1 percent increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing, but the underlying trend appears positive,” said Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter’s CEO, in a statement. “Steady if not spectacular might be the best way to describe performance to date.”

Microsoft, for example, has been running a series of television advertisements that show zombielike people spouting nonsensical facts and data as a result of search overload ” an effort to portray Bing as providing Web surfers with more of the information they are looking for.

Initially the market share of all Microsoft’s search properties (Bing, Live Search and MSN Search combined) increased to 9.21 percent right after Bing debuted June 1, dropped back the next two weeks, then grew to 8.45 percent during the period of June 22 to 28, leading to the overall 8.23 percent market share for the month, according to Dublin, Ireland-based StatCounter.

The market-share numbers are based on an analysis of 1.3 billion search engine referring clicks worldwide (336 million from the U.S.) collected from StatCounter’s network of 3 million Web sites.

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• CRN